


The Ease of Being Uneasy

by reserve



Category: True Detective
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Pre-Slash, These Shit Heads, White Men Being Sad at Each Other, Worst Cops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5481944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rust and Marty have a couple beers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ease of Being Uneasy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OzQueen/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, OzQueen! I tried to keep it as gen as possible, but it's hard to run from your true nature. I think Rust would agree <3 <3\. I hope you have a happy and healthy new year. 
> 
> My many thanks to [fourfreedoms](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms) for the speedy beta and kind words.

_You and I nursing on a poison that never stung_  
_Our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it_  
_Somewhere for this, death and guns_  
_We are deaf, we are numb._

—Hozier

 

A millennium later, with the gaping void of time and death yawning between now and back then, Marty said to him, “Why’d you fuck my wife anyway, Rust?”

And Rust said, real slow, half-smiling, “Why’s a man do anything at all?”

“Be honest now,” Marty said.

Rust took a long drag off his waning cigarette. “Because I couldn’t fuck you, Marty. Why else?”

\--

The sky was hazy, a raw pomegranate red, and the sinking sun looked like a bullet wound. They had closed the book on the Lange murder a year back or so, and ever since then it had been a collection of low-grade sickos, nothing with the magnitude of artistic mutilation that Dora Lange had been subjected to.

But that afternoon, the case file that fell into the no-man’s-land between the seam of their two desks featured calculated madness, immorality given form and logic. Rust had poured over the photographs. Marty had taken one look and shoved away from his desk to find a cup of coffee, a stormcloud over his head the size of Texas. He had a way of getting genuinely bent out of shape that death would even show his face in town these days.

“The ‘wound man,’” Marty said, coming back onto the bar patio with two beers. Rust could hear the quotations in his voice. He put the drinks down and got back into his chair like he meant to settle in.

Rust hummed, and looked out into the distance at the sunset. Just beyond the bar’s marred wooden deck stood a fanboat in a chunk of fetid bayou. The air was still thick and warm from the day’s heat. He could clearly picture both the forensic photographs from their new case and the corresponding ancient diagram the murder called to mind.

“Now, I just can’t fathom why you’d want to show all kinds of injuries on one body.”

"You draw much when you were a kid?” Rust asked.

“Certainly not like you, Picasso.”

“Paper’s expensive. Poor kids like us? We erased and drew over our mistakes. I made a palimpsest out of every piece of paper I could get my hands on.”

Marty looked at him, and raised his bottle to his lips.

“The ‘wound man’ is an old drawing,” Rust continued. “15th century. Paper was even more expensive back then. Sometimes it wasn’t even paper, it was vellum. So: fit as much information as you can onto one page. Put all the wounds on one man.”

“Then either our man thinks murder is expensive and had to fit all his wrath onto one body, or he’s a fan of obscure texts. Like yourself.”

Marty gestured at Rust magnanimously and Rust snorted. “ _Or,_ he’s a surgeon. A doctor of some kind.”

“Either way, lotta trouble to kill a man and then lay him out all nice just to stick a bunch of weapons in him. Like—like he's practicing for the murder art Olympics.” 

“Maybe he is.”

“I give him a six out of ten, if that’s the case.” Marty smirked.

“Be sure to tell him when we collar him.”

“Reckon I will.”

They clinked their fresh beers together then, both a little bit amused, and at 5 beers each, steadily heading towards drunk.

Maybe he and Marty had had too much time to talk over the years. Too many long car rides through half-gone towns in bit-o-nothing parishes. Maybe they were both tripping toward some kind of new ugliness, and couldn’t help but have a laugh when the dark they encountered there didn’t seem quite as dim as half the other nights they’d seen. Rust would be a liar if he said he didn’t prefer a bit of good old fashioned savagery to some of the things he and Marty had seen on the Lange case. Sometimes his brain felt irrevocably soiled, like he had shit behind his eyeballs that would never come clean off. It was a dirty hell; but at least Marty shared it with him.

“The ‘wound man,’” Marty said again, his lips pursing together and coming apart. He’d undone his tie, and there was a sweaty sheen along his neck.

“We can go up to Shreveport tomorrow; check their library collection. See what the kids have been digging up for inspiration these days.”

“You really think the doctor route is the right route?”

“First do no harm,” Rust said, and lit up a cigarette.

“Yeah, all right. You want another one?”

Rust did.

When he was both too drunk to drive and too drunk to drive drunk, Marty hauled him to his feet and out to his sedan. They left Rust’s truck in the Spillway’s gravel lot and headed south on 61 for a ways until Rust was asleep and then waking up to Marty’s driveway.

“Should’ve taken me home.”

“Maggie would hate that.”

“How is she?” Rust slurred. He also didn’t have to ask. Maggie had been gone and then she’d come back. Marty didn’t smell like anyone’s pussy anymore, far as Rust could tell.

“Maggie and the girls are asleep,” Marty said in lieu of an answer, and opened his car door with comical caution. He looked like Elmer Fudd, sneaking off to the hunt. “Gotta be quiet.”

“Always quiet,” Rust said, swinging open his own door. “Help me. Help me up outta here, would you?” He reached into the dark for Marty, waiting for a hand up.

“Man, you are lucky I’m letting your drunk ass sleep here.”

“I am. I am lucky.”

Marty rolled his eyes and led him by his elbow up to the front door. His hand was big and hot on Rust’s bare skin. Rust had taken off his oxford somewhere between the bar and Marty’s car and now he didn’t seem to have it at all. His wife-beater was damp with sweat at his lower back. He leaned against the cool plastic siding while Marty fumbled momentarily with his keys, not even close to sober himself. Rust felt a laugh starting up somewhere near his navel and he tilted forward a little. His eyelids felt heavy, and his lower lip felt like it was on the verge of splitting. There was a tight little pull at its center, accompanied by the kind of pain you want to worry at. He kept stretching out his lips and drawing his teeth hard over the bottom one to make the hurt happen again. He felt good, watching Marty’s body shift in the dark. He chewed at his mouth some more.  

“Quit that,” Marty said. He'd been staring. He shoved gently at Rust’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Rust said, swaying. He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and tugged until he tasted just the faintest bit of copper, hot and alive. Then he licked over the wound.

"I said quit it."

Rust swayed again and caught himself on Marty’s forearm. Marty’s eyes shifted from Rust's mouth to his hand and stayed there.

“Hey,” Rust said again. He cupped Marty’s square jar in his damp palm.

“Rust,” Marty said, a hint of warning. Dangerous waters.

“Luck is just fate's favorite lie,” Rust said. His fingers dug into Marty’s jaw. "Just a fucking fib for babes and fools."

Marty narrowed his eyes like he was about to lay Rust flat on his own doorstep with one good hook. 

"So don't tell me I'm lucky." Rust dropped his hand.

"Yeah, well. Don't know what to say about that." Marty had that scorned look about him, like Rust was in on a joke with the universe that he'd never get to take part in.

"Me neither," Rust said. "Never know what to say at all."

"I'll set up the couch for you," Marty said. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is "the wound man" for reference. I'm not saying they were, but wouldn't it be cute if Rust and Marty were investigating Hannibal Lecter?


End file.
